EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 22nd Annual Report on the Conditions of Children examines Orange County through four interrelated and interdependent focus areas grounded in the OCCP’s mission: Good Health, Economic Well-Being, Educational Achievement and Safe Homes and Communities. Together, these focus areas feature 27 measures including the definition, findings and trends of each indicator, along with a discussion of why the indicator is important.

The economic and racial diversity within the county underscores the complexity of its population and the conditions under which its children are living and growing up. Conditions are improving in some areas, while in others, problems have deepened and enormous need remains. The good news is that of 27 indicators, 17 measures with trend data show signs of improvement. In many cases, however, racial, ethnic and geographic disparities persist.

Among the 11 measures of Good Health, nine reveal improvement, with a notable decrease in the percent of uninsured children from 10.9% in 2008 to 5.0% in 2014. In contrast, up from a low in 2008, there has been a 47% increase in hospitalization rates driven by serious mental illness among children and teens.

Among measures of Economic Well-Being, only one of the five measures, child support distribution, shows signs of improvement. It is important to note that while some measures, such as the number of beneficiaries of CalWORKs, CalFresh and Free and Reduced Price Lunch Price Programs, positively reveal that more children are accessing these benefits, they are used in this report as an indicator of poverty and thus have been identified as needing improvement due to the increasing number of beneficiaries. Notably, the percent of current child support distributed in Orange County has increased 24.2% to 68.0% in 2014/15, surpassing California at 66.9%.

Among the measures within Educational Achievement, both high school dropout rates and college readiness have improved across all races and ethnicities. The percent of high school dropouts has decreased by more than half (53.7%) since the 2009/10 school year to a current low of 5.7% and college readiness among high school graduates has increased 30.2%. Despite these improvements, a deeper look reveals that disparities among race and ethnic groups persist. For example, among students who are deemed college-ready, Hispanic students are least likely to be college-ready despite having the largest proportion of graduates.

New to the report are three academic indicators: Kindergarten Readiness and Academic Performance in both Third Grade English Language Arts and Third Grade Mathematics. The baseline data show that 51.9% of students in Orange County are Kindergarten-ready, just under half (46%) of third grade students meet or exceed standards for English/Language Arts on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) test and just over half (51%) of third grade students meet or exceed standards for Mathematics on the CAASPP test.

Among the six measures of Safe Homes and Communities, five are improving, indicating that Orange County is becoming a safer place for children to live. Again, while there is measurable improvement, the racial and ethnic divide persists. For example, Hispanic youth comprise 77.8% of juveniles who are arrested and receive a formal court hearing, an increase of almost 4.0% from 2013.

In summary, this report makes data about children, youth and families of Orange County accessible and relevant to the public for use in research, as a call to action and to strengthen and guide the collaborative efforts of the OCCP to improve conditions for children in Orange County. By shining a light on the status of children and families, it highlights issues that need to be addressed, measures progress toward healthier outcomes and allows celebration of victories along the way.